The Men's lacrosse team is helping to build interest or a women's lacrosse team on campus.
File photo/The Lion's Roar
Recently, there has been a push to start a women’s lacrosse club at the university. As of now, men’s lacrosse is the only sports club students can join at the university.
The sports club aims to involve students outside of collegiate teams, and hopes students can participate in intramural sports.
Sophomore kinesiology major Heather Honore expressed why she took the role of starting the women’s lacrosse team.
“I played intramural soccer, and then I sat out a semester because I felt as if I was not interacting enough on campus,” said Honore. “It wasn’t enough to motivate me to go to school. Then I thought, ‘What can I do to motivate myself or what can I do to motivate more students in similar situations?’ because there are a lot of students on campus that are waiting for someone to ask them to get involved. They want to. They just don’t know how. For that reason, students are disconnected with school and graduate having not done anything to get the real college experience.”
Honore further explained the process of recruiting and shared how she plans to keep the members motivated without the presence of a team.
“I must keep all the players informed and updated because as time goes by, they’ll lose interest in something they’re not pursuing,” said Honore.
Sophomore art major Dayton Davis expressed how he feels about the variety of activities on campus.
“There isn’t anything to do besides organizational meetings and housing activities,” said Davis. “Personally, I like sports. I don’t want to be on the collegiate team, but I would like to get the experience of facing off against other universities. Intramural and club sports are two different things, because it becomes repetitive playing against the same people over and over again.”
Sports clubs consist of a team of at least ten members while intramural requires only five. Sports clubs are not a part of the NCAA, but the members get the experience of traveling to compete against other universities while playing intramural sports is a recreational activity.
Junior occupational safety health, and environment major David DiPiazza, the founder of the men’s lacrosse team, explained why he started men’s lacrosse and the plans for starting a women’s lacrosse team.
“I transferred here from Louisiana State University, and I wasn’t really involved in anything here by it being my first year,” said DiPiazza. “I merely was getting acclimated. My roommate and I played lacrosse in high, so here in March 2016, we just were hanging out, and I looked over and asked him, ‘Do you want to start a lacrosse club?’ He said yeah, and the recruitment process followed. We got enough players, and we competed last year in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association. There are different conferences within the MCLA because there’s 250 teams nationwide, so we are members of the Lone Star Alliance conference and is made up of teams from Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Nebraska.”
Anyone looking to start a club can gather ten people, head to the Office of Student Engagement and request an organization packet.
